Life Online. Living the Dream. − 27 March, 2007
I once read an interview with Beck where he was asked about his creative process. His answer was simple. He said when he gets into the studio he wants to make music he knows his friends will listen to. Sometimes it means being funny. Sometimes it means being serious. At the end of the day, he just wants to make music they will enjoy.
Building a Community
I made a decision early on in the development of Dandelife that this was not going to be one of those annoying dot-coms with a bunch of advertising and members who have nothing better to do than pretend to be someone else. This comes through in two ways. The first is just plain community-building. Building a community online happens the same way you build a neighborhood. However, instead of walking door to door, meeting people, listening to them and trying to respond to their needs with new public services - to build a community online, I sit physically in my office or at home and I read every post in the help site as well as every public post on the site. As best I can, I let people know that I'm here, I'm listening, and I'm open for feedback. As the site's Co-Founder and only full-time community-builder I think it's important that you all know I'm committed. I think you also apprecaite the kind of feedback I give to the community. Once we had a guy on here posting nothing but promotional content for his radio show. It was apparent he had no goal but to get people to subscribe to his audio stream. So I gently encouraged him to leave. I told him that this wasn't that kind of community and that many people at Dandelife want to get away from that kind of content. I told him he might be confusing us with Myspace. That said, it's not censorship. While people post stories that are both funny and sad (and sometimes blatantly self-promotional), I never will ask someone to limit their public posts if they are simply being true.
The second way that I can accomplish an air of honesty here at Dandelife is through design. There's a lot of member-to-member communication going on here. If you post a story and it has the faint whiff of deceit - chances are you will not be making getting many messages from other members. Why? Because it's not going to make it to any of our favorite's lists or have comments posted on it. The social network is important. It helps us as a group (not just me as the site's founder) ensure that the members who mean the most to the community shine through based on this site's merits for quality: truth, story-telling skills, empathy, tolerance and a willingness to embrace voices that do not all sound like our own.
--------------------
Feedback? Yes, please!
So, yes. We put a premium on honesty here. We meaning, you and me together. We put a premium on creativity. I'd like to think this site was not only designed with my friends in mind, but also that it would attract people who I'd want to be friends with. Namely, you. My hope is to reach as many creative and fun-loving people as are willing to participate.
Participation here is two-way. That is, what you want out of Dandelife is simply an email away. While I'm constantly trying to come up with things that my friends will like, I can often count on them telling me things that they don't like. They don't like spam. They don't like working hard at blogging. They don't like being trapped. They don't like mean people. In short, they are people with normal attitudes about what it takes to stay happy. So I use them often as touchstones for what we develop here. But what helps even more is to hear what my members want. So if you want it, just ask for it. kelly 'at' dandelife 'dot' com.
-------------------
Being a Good 'Net Citizen
One of the things my advisers and members both have encouraged me to do is to embrace the fact that not everyone will like Dandelife. In fact some people will hate it. But that if Dandelife is going to be a good student of Web 2.0 (which some claim is the case) then is also needs to be a good citizen of the Web. That is, for as much as we rely on the kindness of other sites, the bloggers who link to us, and the brilliance of our members here, we also need to give back. "Borrow and share alike," the adage goes. So it is with that notion that I am announcing our plans for complying with the unwritten rules of net citizenship.
First, we are going to be opening up the Dandelife timeline as an API. So if you want to create interactive timelines of your own, go for it. You can already do this by exporting your timeline in SIMILE format (SIMILE Timeline is an open-source project for creating timelines which was initiated at MIT). But later on this year we will be allowing you to create your own Dandelife timelines to copy and paste in your own blog, for example.
Second, we are going to be creating an open API for accessing your data here at Dandelife. I have big hopes for all kinds of cool Dandelife mash-ups in the future. As much as I'd like to build those mash-ups myself, I just know that the community will do a much better job at that than I can. They will also do them much more quickly.
(Some of you have asked me why I don't open the API's up today and here's my answer: reliability. I am footing the bill for the site and while it is sustainable at its currently level, I fear that heavy use of the API will start to warrant more from me. I don't want just an API, but I want that API to be stable, quick and up 24/7.)
The third way we're dedicating ourselves to being good 'net citizens here is to help promote sites and services we love to use. Many people have asked us to put maps on Dandelife since pin-points on a map are essential elements to many of our stories. It's clear that doing that alone would be a huge undertaking. But by using either Google or Yahoo Maps, the prospect is a lot less daunting. So rest assured, we'll be adding one or the other (or both) soon. In the meantime, I thought it would be nice to add music, sms messaging, bookmarks, photos and videos to our Dandelives. Instead of building or licensing services that do that, I thought it would be better if I just tapped into services that share the same outlook. I've mentioned this already, but we're going to be releasing a new version of the site that in essence records our daily activity on sites we're already using (like Amazon, eBay and Netflix, Youtube and Flickr) as well as with sites you may not already be familiar with (like Last.fm , del.icio.us, ma.gnolia and Twitter).
-------------------------
The Kodak of the 21st Century
I'll write more about those sites (why I love them and why you should too) in the future. But for now, I just wanted to get the word out. Dandelife doesn't want to rule the world. We're happy letting you rule your world. When it comes time to archiving that world, consolidating it, maybe even taking some time to elaborate upon it and back-fill it - we'll be here. You and me.
I carry with me in my computer bag a 151-page book that has 19 chapters in it. It's 8 x 10 inches. Perfect bound. It was published in 1977 by Grace Fladseth. You won't find it in any library. You won't find it any bookstore. It has the dusty smell of decaying paper. Here's the title:
From Prairie Marble to Streets of Gold. The life and labors of Lawrence Gifford Nees and his wife, Emma Myrtle Nees, homesteaders in North Dakota, in Eastern Montana, and home missionary workers on the Rocky Mountain District.
The book is marvelous. It's my Mother's Mother's family's story about how they came to be. It has photos from our family archive. It has transcripts from the family prayer (taken from a recording done in 1972). It has maps. It has copied news clips from the times and places chronicled. The book took my great-great-aunt many years to research and many more years to write. I stole the only copy our side of the family has. Reading it, you get a real sense of what life was like for them and how they may have come to be. But what lacks is the true primary accounts from the individuals who had died before the story was written.
When people ask me what my hopes and dreams are for Dandelife.com I have an answer for them. I want Dandelife to be the Kodak of the 21st century. Kodak revolutionized the way people collected recorded their lives. By making a cheap camera that was rugged and easy to use - it put in the hand of poor people a useful took for collecting and sharing memories. (The name they gave it, Brownie, was also crucial to its adoption) It's hard to imagine a world without photography for the masses. Looking forward, I think about how it will be hard to imagine the world without links, chat, videos, geo-tagging, and other hot web 2.0 buzz-words. When I'm 90 - which will be our life expectancy, no doubt - what evidence will I be able to pass on to my kids and their kids about the kind of person I was? Will they be able to listen to the music I owned? Will they see photos and watch videos of me when I was skinny, youthful and quick-witted?
True, this is no small ambition. That's why it's a dream. Until then, like family, we have each other and our stories and the hopes that one day we accept that our dreams breathe life into our reality.
Building a Community
I made a decision early on in the development of Dandelife that this was not going to be one of those annoying dot-coms with a bunch of advertising and members who have nothing better to do than pretend to be someone else. This comes through in two ways. The first is just plain community-building. Building a community online happens the same way you build a neighborhood. However, instead of walking door to door, meeting people, listening to them and trying to respond to their needs with new public services - to build a community online, I sit physically in my office or at home and I read every post in the help site as well as every public post on the site. As best I can, I let people know that I'm here, I'm listening, and I'm open for feedback. As the site's Co-Founder and only full-time community-builder I think it's important that you all know I'm committed. I think you also apprecaite the kind of feedback I give to the community. Once we had a guy on here posting nothing but promotional content for his radio show. It was apparent he had no goal but to get people to subscribe to his audio stream. So I gently encouraged him to leave. I told him that this wasn't that kind of community and that many people at Dandelife want to get away from that kind of content. I told him he might be confusing us with Myspace. That said, it's not censorship. While people post stories that are both funny and sad (and sometimes blatantly self-promotional), I never will ask someone to limit their public posts if they are simply being true.
The second way that I can accomplish an air of honesty here at Dandelife is through design. There's a lot of member-to-member communication going on here. If you post a story and it has the faint whiff of deceit - chances are you will not be making getting many messages from other members. Why? Because it's not going to make it to any of our favorite's lists or have comments posted on it. The social network is important. It helps us as a group (not just me as the site's founder) ensure that the members who mean the most to the community shine through based on this site's merits for quality: truth, story-telling skills, empathy, tolerance and a willingness to embrace voices that do not all sound like our own.
--------------------
Feedback? Yes, please!
So, yes. We put a premium on honesty here. We meaning, you and me together. We put a premium on creativity. I'd like to think this site was not only designed with my friends in mind, but also that it would attract people who I'd want to be friends with. Namely, you. My hope is to reach as many creative and fun-loving people as are willing to participate.
Participation here is two-way. That is, what you want out of Dandelife is simply an email away. While I'm constantly trying to come up with things that my friends will like, I can often count on them telling me things that they don't like. They don't like spam. They don't like working hard at blogging. They don't like being trapped. They don't like mean people. In short, they are people with normal attitudes about what it takes to stay happy. So I use them often as touchstones for what we develop here. But what helps even more is to hear what my members want. So if you want it, just ask for it. kelly 'at' dandelife 'dot' com.
-------------------
Being a Good 'Net Citizen
One of the things my advisers and members both have encouraged me to do is to embrace the fact that not everyone will like Dandelife. In fact some people will hate it. But that if Dandelife is going to be a good student of Web 2.0 (which some claim is the case) then is also needs to be a good citizen of the Web. That is, for as much as we rely on the kindness of other sites, the bloggers who link to us, and the brilliance of our members here, we also need to give back. "Borrow and share alike," the adage goes. So it is with that notion that I am announcing our plans for complying with the unwritten rules of net citizenship.
First, we are going to be opening up the Dandelife timeline as an API. So if you want to create interactive timelines of your own, go for it. You can already do this by exporting your timeline in SIMILE format (SIMILE Timeline is an open-source project for creating timelines which was initiated at MIT). But later on this year we will be allowing you to create your own Dandelife timelines to copy and paste in your own blog, for example.
Second, we are going to be creating an open API for accessing your data here at Dandelife. I have big hopes for all kinds of cool Dandelife mash-ups in the future. As much as I'd like to build those mash-ups myself, I just know that the community will do a much better job at that than I can. They will also do them much more quickly.
(Some of you have asked me why I don't open the API's up today and here's my answer: reliability. I am footing the bill for the site and while it is sustainable at its currently level, I fear that heavy use of the API will start to warrant more from me. I don't want just an API, but I want that API to be stable, quick and up 24/7.)
The third way we're dedicating ourselves to being good 'net citizens here is to help promote sites and services we love to use. Many people have asked us to put maps on Dandelife since pin-points on a map are essential elements to many of our stories. It's clear that doing that alone would be a huge undertaking. But by using either Google or Yahoo Maps, the prospect is a lot less daunting. So rest assured, we'll be adding one or the other (or both) soon. In the meantime, I thought it would be nice to add music, sms messaging, bookmarks, photos and videos to our Dandelives. Instead of building or licensing services that do that, I thought it would be better if I just tapped into services that share the same outlook. I've mentioned this already, but we're going to be releasing a new version of the site that in essence records our daily activity on sites we're already using (like Amazon, eBay and Netflix, Youtube and Flickr) as well as with sites you may not already be familiar with (like Last.fm , del.icio.us, ma.gnolia and Twitter).
-------------------------
The Kodak of the 21st Century
I'll write more about those sites (why I love them and why you should too) in the future. But for now, I just wanted to get the word out. Dandelife doesn't want to rule the world. We're happy letting you rule your world. When it comes time to archiving that world, consolidating it, maybe even taking some time to elaborate upon it and back-fill it - we'll be here. You and me.
I carry with me in my computer bag a 151-page book that has 19 chapters in it. It's 8 x 10 inches. Perfect bound. It was published in 1977 by Grace Fladseth. You won't find it in any library. You won't find it any bookstore. It has the dusty smell of decaying paper. Here's the title:
From Prairie Marble to Streets of Gold. The life and labors of Lawrence Gifford Nees and his wife, Emma Myrtle Nees, homesteaders in North Dakota, in Eastern Montana, and home missionary workers on the Rocky Mountain District.
The book is marvelous. It's my Mother's Mother's family's story about how they came to be. It has photos from our family archive. It has transcripts from the family prayer (taken from a recording done in 1972). It has maps. It has copied news clips from the times and places chronicled. The book took my great-great-aunt many years to research and many more years to write. I stole the only copy our side of the family has. Reading it, you get a real sense of what life was like for them and how they may have come to be. But what lacks is the true primary accounts from the individuals who had died before the story was written.
When people ask me what my hopes and dreams are for Dandelife.com I have an answer for them. I want Dandelife to be the Kodak of the 21st century. Kodak revolutionized the way people collected recorded their lives. By making a cheap camera that was rugged and easy to use - it put in the hand of poor people a useful took for collecting and sharing memories. (The name they gave it, Brownie, was also crucial to its adoption) It's hard to imagine a world without photography for the masses. Looking forward, I think about how it will be hard to imagine the world without links, chat, videos, geo-tagging, and other hot web 2.0 buzz-words. When I'm 90 - which will be our life expectancy, no doubt - what evidence will I be able to pass on to my kids and their kids about the kind of person I was? Will they be able to listen to the music I owned? Will they see photos and watch videos of me when I was skinny, youthful and quick-witted?
True, this is no small ambition. That's why it's a dream. Until then, like family, we have each other and our stories and the hopes that one day we accept that our dreams breathe life into our reality.
ma.gnolia
last.fm
twitter
flickr
del.icio.us
youtube
From Prarie Marble to...
Comments:
Rebeca (April 8, 2007. 08:47am)
This is a good entry. I look forward to seeing the last.fm integration. Oh, and regarding twitter, has anyone written ways in which it can be used? I've noticed a lot of buzz about it, but I'm still not quite sure what it is all about or if it'd be good to use it.
kga245 (April 9, 2007. 03:05am)
Thanks, Rebeca. I'm anxious to see what people do with the new tools too... Re: Twitter, you use it to SMS your friends with one message. Anyone who subscribes to your Twitter feed will get your updates on their phone/IM/email. It's fun. And I'm glad I have an option for recording a thought when I'm not in front of a computer. <a href="http://twitter.com/kellyabbott">Here's my twitter page.</a>
Rebeca (April 14, 2007. 08:11am)
I'm curious so I'm going to try it out.